A FA shared the following note with me she received from Munoz this morning, which heaps praises on employees for a great 2018.

Dear United Team,

The strong operational and financial performance we announced today for the full year and final quarter of 2018 is a resounding affirmation of the promises we made this time last January when we outlined our multi-year growth strategy.

As you remember, we made a series of promises – to our customers and investors as much as to ourselves.

And we can take pride in saying that we fulfilled those promises.

We said we would grow our business, flying when and where our customers most want, earning back customer loyalty, all while maintaining solid operational performance. And we did.

We flew the most passengers ever while setting impressive operational statistics.

We achieved the fewest cancellations in a year.

We ranked in the top tier in on-time D :00 among our major competitors, only missing No. 1 by just 307 departures.

We accomplished all of this in the face of higher fuel costs – which had a negative impact on our bottom line, but a smaller impact on us than on anyone else in the industry.

What you delivered in 2018 has made United the airline to watch. You made believers out of skeptics. You put proof behind the promises we made.

We set the bar high and you cleared it with room to spare. Now, the time has come to raise the bar once more for 2019 and beyond.

More than ever before, we’re going to put our customers at the center of everything we do – every customer, every flight, every day.

Over the course of 2019 and beyond, we’ll roll out a series of innovations and improvements to the customer experience that will defy old expectations and define a new standard for United and our industry.

The newly reimagined United app will make the best app in the business even better. But, we believe that you, our employees, should have the same cutting-edge digital tools that our customers expect – that way you can serve our customers even better. For example, I know the iPads we’ve deployed to our technicians have drastically improved communications and cut down on delays – shaving a minimum of 17 to 18 minutes off maintenance repairs. That gets our customers on their way 50 percent faster.

That’s what we mean when we talk about the digital advantage we’re building for United.

These improvements will help each of us serve our customers better in the moment. But, ultimately, they are only tools. We need your talent to bring them to life.

I want to thank you for your hard work in making 2018 a transformative year for United. Now, I am asking for you to bring the very best of your energy and skills in order to seize the opportunities that lay ahead – the ones we have worked so hard to create for ourselves.

Gratefully,

Oscar

Overall, it is a very nice note and captures nicely, it seems to me, that United is on the right track.

CONCLUSION

One sentence in particular caught my attention:

Over the course of 2019 and beyond, we’ll roll out a series of innovations and improvements to the customer experience that will defy old expectations and define a new standard for United and our industry.

With respect, I love the tone of the letter but become cynical when I read promises like this. But let’s see what United unveils this year beyond a redesigned app. Faster wi-fi throughout the fleet would certainly be appreciated, even if not “defining a new standard.” I’m not looking for additional innovations and improvements before international catering and wi-fi has improved. That’s where United should start. Little steps, then big steps…

About Author

Matthew

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he
travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 120
countries over the last decade. Working both in the aviation industry
and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in the New York
Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BBC, Fox News,
CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Al Jazeera, Toronto Star, and on NPR. Studying
international relations, American government, and later obtaining a
law degree, Matthew has a plethora of knowledge outside the travel
industry that leads to a unique writing perspective. He has served in
the United States Air Force, on Capitol Hill, and in the White House.
His Live and Let's Fly blog shares the latest news in the airline
industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs and promotions, and
detailed reports of his worldwide travel. His writings on
penandpassport.com offer more general musings on life from the eyes of a frequent traveler. He also founded awardexpert.com, a
highly-personalized consulting service that aids clients in the
effective use of their credit card points and frequent flyer miles.
Clients range from retirees seeking to carefully use their nest egg of
points to multinational corporations entrusting Matthew with the
direction and coordination of company travel.

2 Comments

Over the course of 2019 and beyond, we’ll roll out a series of innovations and improvements to the customer experience that will defy old expectations and define a new standard for United and our industry.

That’s the same exact sentence that caught my attention. I’ll be the first to admit as a former multi-year platinum (never made GS – though I’m not bitter. I promise), I’ve come to loathe UA and have moved to DL, but I at least try to maintain an open mind insomuch as improvements made to hard/soft product that may draw my patronage back. However, when I read/hear nebulous statements like this, I think one/some of the following:

1. Service enhancements that truly do benefit the customer but require more work for FAs. Which really means the FAs are now that much more “overworked” and displeased at having to actually serve passengers – you know, since they’re “primarily here for [our] safety”. This leads to even grumpier, frumpier FAs overall and a completely lacklustre holistic hard/soft product despite the well-intentioned upgrades pushed down by corporate. If you can’t fix the attitudes of frontline employees, then no amount of hard/soft product upgrade is really going to ameliorate the experience.
2. A degradation in service that is essentially a willful misinterpretation of customer feedback. You know, the “enhancements” that have happened to in-flight dining, or to the MileagePlus program, that actually reduce customer satisfaction yet somehow (magically?) came from customer feedback.
3. The introduction of some new process or technology for the sake of new processes or technologies – finding a problem to fit a solution. The musical chairs of boarding zones comes to mind. 5 zones. 8 zones. Down to 3 zones. Boarding by color. Boarding by color and number. Back to 5 zones. Naming zones after precious metals/jewels. Boarding by pop icon/singer name so people in Boarding Zone Christina Aguilera (Group 5) don’t feel as if priority boarders in Boarding Zone Sting (Group 1) are better than them while still allowing the Aguileras the opportunity to feel superior to those Basic Economy pax boarding in Boarding Zone Kim Kardashian-West (Group 11,002). Hell, maybe I should be an efficiency consultant for UA.

Okay…I’ll step off my soapbox now. But good on United. And I actually kind of like Oscar even if I prefer to avoid UA. So there’s that.